hstein3:I had a friend in grad school who had worked for an NIH lab. He said that they kept a rack of vials and beakers full of various Kool-Aids in the back of the lab for whenever movie/documentary makers would come by. If they needed generic "Science in action" scenes, they'd drag out the Kool-Aid and start pipetting it from one container to another.

Also popular: Old school sequencing gels. Those gel slabs were enormous, so having big green bands of dye visible on them was a nice visual.

That reminds me of most of the organic chemistry i did as a lab assistant just after uni. It was